‘I did not shrink back from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God.’ (Acts 20:27)
‘Sexual orientation is immutable to change.’ Taiwanese constitutional court on why this island nation became the first in Asia to initiate ‘gay’ marriage.

Our American team gathered with thirty wounded healer/leaders from around Asia on Pentecost Eve in Manila. These men and women from The Philippines, Thailand, China, and India had been battered by enslaving forces in their cultures: families fractured by poverty which rendered their young lives vulnerable to abuse, porn addiction, gender disorientation, and occultism. Their internal chaos is sweetly covered over by the ‘saving face’ culture of Asia where the most shameful thing is to admit one’s brokenness, especially as it relates to sexual dishonor. One learns to laugh instead of cry, to cover wounds rather than expose them. Many on our team had staggered into adulthood and into the loving arms of Jesus through brave churches, which provided for them Living Waters.

Our dear friends Benjie and Hazel Cruz initiated Living Waters in The Philippines (I first met Benjie in Bangkok Thailand in 2001 where he sought healing for his SSA and received a vision for healing his nation); little did he know that he and team would become the center for reaching a continent! We gathered together as a Gideon’s army and offered God our weakness, our weariness, and our inability to meet the needs of 70 Catholic and evangelical participants to come who would need deep healing and training to heal others. As Taiwan had just days before become the first Asian nation to initiate ‘gay marriage’, we realized that we faced another enslaving force—the western apostasy that ‘gay selves’ are genetic and unchangeable, the only solution for vulnerable persons.

Those broken before the God of Mercy know better. Fractured lives need transformation, not further deformation through conformity to fruitless individual rights. Jesus sets people free from the wounding at the core of disordered identities. We prayed that a new wind of Pentecost would empower us to wage war on deception by holding out the whole truth of the Gospel. As we received His love afresh, we renewed our pledge to be faithful to Jesus and to Asia.

God reminded us of Ezekiel 37 as we submitted our ‘dry bones’ to Him, that He might unite us to Himself in intimate love and teach us to submit to each other as to manifest all the spiritual gifts needed to bring healing to the land. And God said: ‘I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life…’ I prophesied as He commanded me, and the Spirit of Pentecost fell on us that Sunday as we worshipped and laid hands on one another.

By the time everyone arrived, the team was on fire to declare how the glory of God had surpassed the dishonor and disorientation of our lives; over half came out of homosexual backgrounds, and we could honestly testify (as each team member did) that mercy and order and honor, not shame, has become our ground and crown. Obviously, the Taiwanese government knows not what Jesus and His Church can accomplish in the saints.

After the team shared, we invited all to gather around the Cross, and Almighty mercy fell like fire on the shame-bound. Chains broke and eyes saw Jesus afresh. Those who look to the Lord are radiant; their faces never covered with shame’ (PS 34:5). Our glorious God is assembling a glorious, humble army in Asia; there, the wind of Pentecost empowers a people to declare war on human enslavement.

‘The breath of God entered them; they came to life, and stood up on their feet—a vast army.’ (EZ. 37: 9, 10)

Please join us in San Diego on June 16th and 17th for the sixth annual RHN Hope 2017 Conference as hundreds gather to celebrate how Jesus has set them free from gender identity distortions. Preview with us the first full-length documentary film ever made–Tranzfomed–on how Jesus restores the transgendered. Register here today!

The nearly uniform acceptance of homosexuality today cannot hide the wound at its core. No amount of societal celebration cures the wound; it masks it, thereby exploiting persons who buy the lie of ‘gay goodness’.

Citing the disconnect between an age that celebrates ‘gay marriage’ while astronomical rates of depression, loneliness, and substance abuse continue unabated for ‘gay’ men, Michael Hobbes (himself ‘gay’-identified) ponders without answers why the liberated are still enslaved to self-destructive behaviors. (Together Alone: The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness, Huffington Post; Mar. 2nd, ‘17). TO his credit he refuses to cite homophobia as the scapegoat for a recent survey of ‘gay’ men in New York City in which 75% defined themselves as anxious, depressed, chemically addicted and having risky sex.

Hobbes stops short of citing the homosexual condition itself as the problem. He does however give anecdotal evidence to the early wound in the gender identity development of men who later ‘gay’-identify. One man wonders if the fickle cruelty of peers in San Francisco is due to ‘the bullied having become the bullies. You grow up with all this baggage then realize that all the men around you share the same baggage.’ Hobbes quotes a sociologist who surmises that a male-only community ‘magnifies the challenges of masculinity. Masculinity is precarious. It has to be continually enacted or defended…’ In other words, a group of men trying to work out their masculinity by seeking to prove themselves sexually is a high risk, no win equation.

The late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi knows why. In his excellent article, ‘The Traumatic Foundation of Male Homosexuality’ (Crisis Magazine, Dec. 19th, ’16), he convincingly charts how adult homosexual behavior is rooted in early gender trauma and thus has an undeniable dimension of hostility. Think about it: how could a person who has rejected his gender value due to a break in early bonds, sexual abuse, or other sources of traumatic shame, find harmony with a similarly fractured person? The eroticization of the wound electrifies then burns out an already vulnerable person. ‘Gay is good’ defies wisdom and sound judgment.

But wisdom is not enough; it can only highlight what we need. Or rather Who we need. The only hope for the ‘gay’ wounded is the healing, saving love of Jesus. Persons whose fractures run deep and who fear no healing exists anyway are prone to defenses that guard their wounds. The wound then becomes the basis for an identity and a host of bad habits. Only Divine Mercy conveyed by loving, wise friends can function like ‘living water’; as Jesus astonished the Samaritan woman, let us surprise the wounded with kindness that frees them to admit their suffering and open to Mercy Himself.

‘The mercy of God is not an abstract idea but a concrete reality through which He reveals His love as that of a mother or father, moved to the very depths out of love for their child.’ Pope Francis, The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy

The dark powers that drive our ‘gay marriage’ culture have effectively skewed the meaning of justice, compassion and human dignity. More personally, we witness our loved ones caught in the undertow of these dark waters. Many of you now face painful relationships with persons you love due to a clash of moral values.

Good friends, sons and daughters, spouses, parents, entire faith communities are now ‘out and proud’; we grieve over an alien spirit that has overtaken them. We whose brokenness led us to cleave to Christ know that only He can liberate the conflicted heart.

But what can we do? We cannot make another’s moral or spiritual choice. But we can pray! Join us at Desert Stream Ministries for 40 days from Oct. 14-Nov. 22 as we cry out for mercy on behalf of lost loved ones. Just as nothing pierces our hearts more than their distress, nothing pierces God’s heart more. He longs for their return to His loving care more than we do. Only the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit can reorient them according to His best for their lives.

And He delights in our entrusting to Him the fear and strife that distorts the beautiful mercy He has entrusted to us. He frees us from ‘God-playing’ and frees us for faithful reliance upon Himself. As we deepen in prayer, we begin to see how He is converting us through the distress of another; our sometimes shrill self-righteousness is giving way to a humble brokenness that invites mercy.

By the first week of October, you will receive a PDF of a 40-day prayer guide. Drawing daily upon Psalm 116, we will reflect upon how merciful God has been to us in our sins and wounds; we will then ask Him for a double portion of that mercy to extend to loved ones far from the Father’s house. He awaits them and sees them this very moment. May God use these days to give us His sight and His heart for lost loved ones. May He make us a small answer to our own prayers.

We would ask as you pray with us that you give up something of value during these days. As you go without, we ask that God would grant you the freedom to linger a bit longer in His presence. Let whatever ‘hunger’ you experience be a reminder of the greater need someone else has for your merciful prayers.

“Jesus rose up…and said to His disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ ” (Mk 4:39, 40)

The sleeping Church can no longer ignore the alarms. She must become the answer to a consumer-driven culture intent on making gender identity and marriage a figment of our fallen imagination.

What’s at stake is the dignity of persons created in God’s image; will the Church mobilize and guide them into transformation, into becoming icons of the Holy One? Or will she slumber as the vulnerable are conformed to a host of worldly identities which reduce them to idols?

Like Jesus asleep in the boat, we His members must arise and calm the storm by mercifully calling all to chastity and relational integrity. The answers are ours, eternally; now is the hour to declare those answers clearly and humbly. Christians who mumble won’t be heard.

After the Court’s ‘gay marriage’ decision at the end of June, I attended Mass where the pastor alluded to Christian truth amid falsehood but never quite landed; I nearly fell out of my pew waiting for him to say something hopeful and helpful about how the Church’s embrace of persons with same-sex attraction exceeds false solutions to the problem. I waited in vain until the service ended then made a bee-line for the poor guy: ‘Please don’t forget persons like me who are vulnerable…If you the pastor don’t say anything, we won’t hear anything but ‘gay is the way, walk in it.’ “

Then I received a gift in the mail. That same Sunday, a Catholic Church in Pennsylvania (which just happens to run a Living Waters group) put out the most amazing church bulletin I have ever read. Really. Entitled ‘Difficult Conversations for Faithful Catholics’, it laid out a series of brief articles on how to love well persons with SSA while remaining true to one’s Christian conscience. Its premise? We all come to Christ broken; we all need Jesus in order to discover together what it means to become whole. I invite you to download the PDF. .

Simple. Smart. Truly loving. This is the Church who embodies what she preaches and does so with stunning accuracy. Jesus is waking up and arising through His body. All we need to fear is faithlessness. We have the answers. Let’s give them!

‘There is no greater tragedy for man than the disillusionment he suffers when he has falsified his hope by placing it in something other than the Love that satisfies.’
St. Josemaria Escriva

We are setting up future generations for disillusionment. We are giving them false hope. Case in point: our national celebration of Bruce Jenner-in-drag as ‘athlete of the year’ at the ESPY awards and the smug assumption that we are now on the right side of history with ‘gay marriage’ in America.

The Supreme Court redefining marriage is founded on the wrong assumption that people are intrinsically, immutably homosexual, an ‘ethnos’ in its own right. We then conclude that the ‘gay’ pursuit of happiness must include the right to same-gender marriage, in the same breath that we champion freedom from racial discrimination.

That is a lie. Persons with same-sex attraction are not inherently ‘gay’ any more than are persons with heterosexual lust problems. Anyone facing disordered desires can change; ethnic status is immutable and inherently blessed, far removed from the moral implications of celebrating alternate sexual ‘selves.’

Could it be that persons with same-sex attraction are in conflict with their true ethnos–to be reconciled to their own gender in order to make peace with their need for the opposite gender? We do no-one any favor by holding out the hope that ‘gay’ marriage will resolve the conflict at the core of same-sex attraction. It falsifies the hope of happiness. We must dig deeper than superficial ethnic metaphors in order to probe why persons become ‘gay’ and how they can resolve their real conflicts.

On that fault line, we now embrace the right of persons to choose their own gender, a la Bruce Jenner. His hope now lies in creating a ‘female’ self through hormones and plastic surgery and designer gowns. I watched gap-mouthed as this deep-voiced 65-year-old man in a tight white dress received his ESPY award and cast a global vision of ‘self-acceptance’ for young people as equally conflicted in their gender identities as he is. In his words, ‘This award is about accepting people for who they are.’

Jenner is clueless about who he is and yet now seeks to guide thousands into becoming ‘who they are’. The blind lead the blind into bitter disillusion. ‘They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves to depravity’ (2P 2:9).

We only know who we are based on the One who made us and who with great compassion longs to redeem us from the catastrophic impact of sin upon our gender selves. For the sake of future generations, let us forsake all complicity with false hope. Let us seek with all our hearts to make Jesus known to vulnerable ones. He alone is trustworthy, the Hope who will not disappoint us.